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The Porcelain Youth | ____/// luminoushadow |||______

My mission is to slay an enemy
whom I do not fully understand
And still I see my weapon stained
with the blood of the blameless

I seek to justify my sins
and wash from my hands
the evidence of my deeds;
but my mind remains
diluted in this crimson river,
plaguing my waking life
and haunting my very existence

You ask me to be brave
and send me off with admiration
You ask me to be strong
and gave me means to protect myself

But you did not ask me
if I was willing to kill,
another,
because he does not share an ideal
that you hold to be righteous
if I was willing to lay waste,
a land and its people,
because they do not believe
what you hold to be self-evident

The truth is,
I will not fight under a fever of destruction
and plunge our world into ruination

Perhaps it is best that I do not raise arms
at all,
against my fellow man,
who are also born of flesh and blood
who will recoil when he is shot
and bleed when his skin is broken

I am no hero, he is not my enemy
We are the porcelain youth,
Our skin,
Tender and scarred
Our lives,
Fragile and broken

Is glory worth
The fate of my brothers and sisters
sealed in a body bag?
Or worse…
Blown unrecognizably apart
only to be carried home by the winds?

How many countless lives
must prematurely sink into the dirt?
and how many more
will be shamelessly smothered in shallow graves
As we dig for this fool’s gold?

***

And I will say to this woeful soldier
fear not for the porcelain youth
your laments are carried by the winds of change
Our fathers know not what they do
in the games that they play with our lives

If today,
in fear,
we live, fight, and kill
tomorrow,
in fear,
we will die

These fears are only the puppetry of shadows
casting a darker shade of ourselves
wrestling with our own inner demons
and projecting its image into our reality

Fear not lamenting youth
for you are not alone
in your depths of loneliness and despair;
in the prison of your conscience
and the slaughter-house of innocence

I will stand with you through the darkness of our times
when you find yourself fragmented
I will gather your pieces and rebuild your hope

Together we will carry this beacon of light
and shine its truth of love and peace
into man’s shadowy heart

For he cannot be changed
with blunts or bullets,
beaten or deranged
as this can only scar his flesh
while his conviction grows ever stronger

Speak to him in his heart
and in time he will see for himself
the error of his ways
Only then will you have turned him as the enemy,
and will have also made him
a friend